Washington DC-Baltimore Area
Team Lead in the Early Translation Branch at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and Staff Scientist in the NCATS 3D Tissue Bioprinting Group. Development of 2D HTS and 3D tissue platforms for disease modeling, therapeutics development, and drug validation. >13 years of lab research experience in virology and disease modeling, >7 years experience in drug discovery. https://ncats.nih.gov/staff/leeemm
-3DTBL Team Lead: modeling neurological diseases and liver-disease in human relevant tissue platforms - Advanced Models & Cell Based Discovery Team Lead: discovery of small-molecule based antivirals
3D Tissue Bioprinting Lab, Early Translation Branch
3-D Tissue Bioprinting Program, Early Translation Branch, December 2019-current •Development of novel 3-D and iPSC-derived models for disease modeling and drug screening. •Development of models for high impact viral infections. Therapeutics Development Branch, July 2019-November 2019 •Internal lab lead for three independent projects in diverse areas: opioid addiction, Zika and dengue virus, and Niemann Pick Disease Type C. •Implementing and developing models for drug discovery using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells, neural stem cells, cancer cell lines, and 3D cell culture brain organoids. • Anti-flavivirus quantitative high-throughput drug screening for several diseases including dengue virus; co-selection of compounds for flavivirus small animal model testing.
Transition role training new grad students in my Ph.D. lab before moving to postdoctoral position that began in August at NCATS.
Ph.D. in CMB/Virology (Flaviviridae); PI - Dr. Hengli Tang. • Utilized cell-culture based models to study infectious positive strand RNA viruses including hepatitis C virus (HCV), dengue virus (DENV), and Zika virus (ZIKV). • Discovered and reported a novel mechanism for HCV-induced steatosis. • Developed a 3D stem cell-based hepatocyte model for hepatitis C virus infection. • Co-developed an assay for measuring ZIKV infection in cell culture which was then adapted to 1536-well format at NCATS for drug screening and used to screen >6,000 compounds. Co-identified anti-ZIKV compounds for further development. • Drafted provisional patents for the FSU patent office for three sets of anti-flaviviral compounds (subsequently filed). • Co-developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for ZIKV protein (NS1) that was later commercialized and sold at BioFront Technologies (Tallahassee, FL).
•Co-developed an ELISA for hepatitis C virus (HCV) non-structural protein 3 (NS3) for commercial development. •Stem cell culture. •Differentiated stem cells to hepatocyte like cells for studying direct infection with HCV positive patient serum.